


One Rainy Night

by FeralPen



Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 16:54:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15344271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeralPen/pseuds/FeralPen
Summary: Even vigilantes get rained out. Matt and Jessica dry off, and they address some unspoken things between them.





	One Rainy Night

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is the first fanfic I've written and posted anywhere in about 8 years. I'm pretty nervous about it, but I've decided to jump in feet first. I hope I got the characterization at least somewhat believable, and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> The Mess is the best.
> 
> Also, I have this feeling that Foggy's estimation of Matt's prowess with women is greatly exaggerated. Headcanon that Matt likes relationships a lot more than casual sex, but he's such a train wreck that he's more of a serial monogamist.

New York thunderstorms had a way of sneaking up and suddenly throwing the sky open to drown the world below, as if the torrent could wash the stink and the grime away. The irony of it was that the smell of garbage and too many humans just turned into the smell of wet garbage and humans, but the upside was that nobody wanted to be caught in a downpour like this one.  
Even vigilantes got rained out, Jessica reflected as she mashed the button for the fifth floor in the rickety elevator of her building. Her leather jacket had protected her torso from the worst of it, but her hair dripped down her collar and her boots squeaked on the old linoleum as she got in and rode up to her floor. They squeaked and squelched more as she strode down to the door that - miraculously - still had a pane of frosted glass with Alias Investigations printed across it. All in all, it was miserable, and she couldn’t wait to shuck her drenched jeans off.  
“You’re gonna slip and fall out there,” she called, not bothering to raise her voice above normal speaking volume as she stomped through her front room and unfastened her fire escape window latches.  
“Your window was locked.”  
Daredevil yanked the window up and slipped through like a wet eel. He shut the window back and awkwardly stepped away from her desk, leaving puddles underneath him and looking for all the world like a drowned cat.  
Jessica grimaced at the puddles as she slid her jacket off and flopped onto the couch to unzip her boots. “Yeah, well I wasn’t planning on using the fire escape as my prefered exit.”  
Daredevil turned his head in her general direction, his pouty lips quirking into a smirk, “I think even in your building, people would notice if you brought a known vigilante through the front door.”  
“Fuck ‘em,” she said blithely. “You gonna take that off or what? You’re dripping everywhere.”  
God’s sake, the man had the audacity to look embarrassed.  
“I don’t, um, have much on under the suit, and I don’t want to - make you uncomfortable - or, um, impose…”  
“I let you in, didn’t I?” Jessica rolled her eyes and got up, kicking her boots under the edge of the shitty couch. “I’m no blushing virgin, Murdock. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”  
The man hummed, not quite agreeing, but when she came back from the bathroom with a couple towels, he’d taken the helmet and gloves off and was fiddling with the straps and buckles. She watched at he finally unclasped whatever he’d been struggling with and slid the suit down to his waist.  
“You really don’t even wear an undershirt under there?”  
Murdock laughed and sat down on the couch to tug at his boot laces. “It’s hot under the suit.”  
“Gross, so your suit is just full of sweat all the time?”  
“And blood,” he said cheerfully. “It’s pretty gross.”  
“God, you’re weird.” She watched him carefully put his boots under the couch next to hers and pull the lower half of the suit off. She was suddenly painfully aware that she had a man in nothing but a pair of dark gray boxers on her couch. And those were muscles, still slightly sweaty, rippling muscles. She covered her totally-not-embarrassment-and-definitely-not-checking-him-out-no-way by throwing a towel at him.  
“Thanks. What do you want me to do with…” He gestured with the suit.  
Jessica took it from him. “I'll hang it up in the bathroom.”  
The rain was still pouring down outside. A rumble of thunder vibrated through her bones. She threw the red suit over her shower curtain rod and stopped in the bedroom to ditch her pants. She didn’t have any other pairs clean enough to put on, and after a moment she shrugged and went without. Murdock was blind, right? What was he going to do, ogle her?  
Murdock was still sitting on her couch, picking at a loose thread on the towel. He perked up when she walked in and threw the other towel around her neck.  
“Thanks for letting me in.”  
“No problem. I could see the headline - Daredevil struck by lighting, running around on rooftops like an idiot. The Bulletin would sell out.”  
Murdock huffed out a laugh at that. “Probably. More likely I’d fall off a roof and break my neck.”  
They lapsed into silence after that, listening to the rain beating against the windows. The silence was making Jessica antsy. It had been a long time since she’d had company. She didn’t know what to do. She peered into the fridge. Half a dozen eggs, a Red Bull, and a pizza box that was probably full of mold at this point. She shut the door. Murdock had his eyes closed, but his head was tilted in that way that said he was listening to something.  
“I’d offer you something to eat, but I don’t have anything.”  
“That’s fine.” Murdock sounded distant.  
Jessica started digging around in the drawers of her desk. There it was. A mostly-full bottle of not-quite-bottom-shelf whiskey. See? She could be a good hostess.  
“Drink?” Murdock nodded, so Jessica grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and joined him at the couch. “What are you listening to?”  
“The rain.” There was a dopey little smile on Murdock’s face now. “It’s nice. It’s like… It’s like a blanket of static over everything. All the noise of the city is muffled. I can hear the drops hitting the buildings, the windows, the A/C units, the streets... It’s almost like an orchestra.”  
Jessica didn’t say anything. She just poured out two large helpings of whiskey and held one out for him while she took a stiff drink of her own. Murdock took his own and sniffed it before taking a gulp. She watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed, listened to his small hiss as it burned at his mouth and throat.  
Jessica wasn’t stupid or half as much in denial as most people thought she was. She knew Murdock was hot. She’d watched his tight little butt in that ridiculous outfit of his enough times to know that she wanted him. The only unusual thing was that she hadn’t acted on it yet, but in the months between him being dead and him being here, it had never come up. Here he was now, though, in her apartment, mostly-naked and drinking whiskey with her like this was the most normal thing for him. With the storm rumbling on overhead and nothing much else to lose, Jessica made her decision.  
Murdock must have heard or smelled something change, because his eyes opened and he turned his head to search vacantly around her face.  
“Jessica?”  
She set her now-empty glass on the floor and turned to him, reaching to hold his neck in one hand and straddle one leg, her knee on the couch in between his thighs. She leaned in to kiss him, but a hesitant hand in her hair stopped her. He was searching her face, not seeing anything, but looking lost. Her stomach dropped a little. He didn’t want this.  
“What -” She waited for him to swallow and finish. “What color is your hair?”  
What.  
“What?”  
Murdock - no, Matt - Matt’s face was starting to turn red. “Sorry, I - bad timing, you were trying to - it’s just…”  
Jessica leaned her weight back on her heels, her butt resting on his knee. Matt was looking more embarrassed.  
“Sorry, it’s just… I just wanted to know…”  
“It’s black.” Jessica swallowed her own mouthful of saliva and smiled ruefully. “Not like dark brown. Black-black. Why do you want to know?”  
Matt’s face was still red, but the tightness around his mouth and eyes eased a little. “Thank you. It’s… I don’t actually know what most people look like. I get an image in my head, and I can tell some things on my own. From my senses. I can tell that you’re thin, how tall you are, the general shape of you, what you smell like, but not… I don’t actually know what you look like.”  
Jessica didn’t know how to feel. This wasn’t going exactly how she’d expected it to go. Matt couldn’t hide his facial expressions for shit, though, and the open honesty and yearning on his face was making something in her chest feel like it was being tugged.  
She found herself speaking before she read too much more into it. “I have black hair. My lips are - they’re big, I guess. Too big, I think. My nose turns up at the end. My eyes are hazel. I wear a lot of eyeliner most of the time. I think it’s running down my face right now. Um, I’m really pale. Like, vampire pale. Is that - does that help?”  
Matt was smiling, now. His hand had dropped to his side, but now he brought it up and hesitantly touched the side of her face. She leaned into it unconsciously.  
“Thank you. That’s - That’s perfect. Thank you. Can I kiss you now?”  
Oh. “Don’t have to ask twice.”  
She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but kissing Matt was intense. Not like kissing Luke, all passion and unbridled intensity, letting loose on strength usually kept wrapped up tight. Not like kissing Oscar, where she remembered that sex could be awkward and fun again. No, kissing Matt was like kissing a hurricane on a leash, all gentleness and hidden fury, intoxicating in its contradictions. He drew her in, light caresses and a thumb stroking her cheek, before it changed, suddenly, to hard nips and swipes of tongue, his other hand coming to clasp her shoulder. She gave back as good as she got until he slowed down again, gentling once more under her grasping hands and panting mouth.  
They broke apart.  
“Good?” Matt asked, the bastard, because she was sure he could hear her pounding heartbeat and smell the situation in her underwear.  
She growled a little and leaned in again, but he pulled away from her, his face turning serious.  
“Jessica, we need to talk.”  
“God, Murdock, do we?” She sat back on her heels again, not being subtle about pressing her crotch to the naked skin of his thigh. His chest blushed along with the rest of him, she noted. Thunder shook the building again. “Please tell me you’re not saving it until marriage.”  
He didn’t laugh. “I just want to make sure.”  
“What? That we don’t do something we’ll regret? Save it.”  
“No.” He looked achingly lost, still. “I just want to know what this is for you, because… I don’t really do one night stands.”  
“Is that what you think this is?” Her tone was sharp.  
She needed to tone it down. He wasn’t asking something unreasonable, asking for boundaries, asking to know what he was getting into, but this line of talk was uncomfortable. It was skittering a little too close to feelings, which she was not good at talking about. It was so much easier to just jump in feet first and figure out all the rest later.  
Matt was frowning more, looking like a kicked puppy. “I’d like it to be more. Like I said, I don’t… I’m not comfortable with one and done relationships, and I like you, Jessica. I like this. I’m not asking you to… I don’t know what I’m asking you for, but if this is just scratching an itch, I’d rather just skip it. I think we work well as friends.”  
God, trust Murdock to make sex complicated, but she needed to calm her heart down. It wasn’t easy to let her walls down, like, ever, but maybe she owed him enough to be honest with him. As honest as she was capable of being.  
“Calm down, Matt,” she said instead, aiming for droll, maybe succeeding. “I’m not… Ugh, I like you too, asshole, and if that isn’t the most middle school thing you’ve made me say, I don’t know. I’m not necessarily looking for a one-night stand either. Can we skip to the fucking each other’s brains out part and figure the rest out later?”  
“So there will be a later?” he asked, but he was smirking a bit.  
“Fine. Yes, there will be a later.” She grabbed the back of his neck and yanked him closer and, smiling slightly, he let her.  
They made it to the bed, eventually. The storm was still raging outside as she half-dragged him to bed, yanking off the rest of her clothes inelegantly. Matt followed her, a willful lamb to the slaughter.  
Most of Jessica’s sexual experience post-Kilgrave was violent, to some extent. Kilgrave had never been rough with her, just slimy and disgusting in a way that was unique to him. He was gentle only because bedroom violence didn’t excite him, not out of concern for Jessica. He told her what she liked, told her body to react, so when Jessica got free, she took great pleasure in having sex however much and however she liked. The less like Kilgrave, the better.  
Matt was different. Whereas everything Kilgrave did was for his own benefit, Matt was the opposite. It must have had something to do with his super-senses,or maybe it was unique to his particular brand of martyrdom, but Matt focused on her with laser precision. It was almost overwhelming, this gentleness and intuition.  
She wanted to protest, to say that she could take it rougher, but it was hard to argue with Matt, with his hands and lips ghosting over her skin, mapping her out. Their lives were rough enough, she justified, as she carefully gripped his hair and let him kiss a spot on her hip that she wasn’t even aware was an erogenous zone until he’d found it. They didn’t need more ugliness here. And Matt was so happy, she didn’t need super senses to tell, just the smile he couldn’t keep off of his face.  
Fuck.  
She might be in love with him.  
She’d deal with that later. For now, she let Matt unravel her with his hands, his mouth, his body, as the storm lashed at the windows outside.  
\---  
“Jess. Jessica?”  
She rolled over, groaning, “What time is it?” Something close to that, at least.  
He must’ve understood, because he was asking his phone, and the mechanical voice was chirping out 3:58 am loud enough for them both to hear.  
When she sat up, Matt looked remorseful. He was holding his devil suit in his hands.  
“I know I said I didn’t want this to be a one-night stand, but I have to go, and I didn’t want you to think I snuck out.” Her heart-rate must have spiked a bit, because he was quick to explain, “I have to get home before the sun comes out.”  
Oh yeah. He didn’t have any clothes except the suit.  
She grunted sleepily while he slipped into the suit and did up the buckles. It wasn’t raining anymore, the city quiet at this early hour. She was almost dozing off again when he came back, boots clunking lightly on the floor.  
“Jessica.” A gloved hand touched her hair gently. She woke up enough to roll over and look at him. He was suited up except for the helmet.  
He smiled at her, tilting his head to listen to her. “Want to get breakfast?”  
“Right now?”  
“Of course not.” He was laughing quietly.  
“Don’t you have work?” He did lawyer stuff in the morning, didn’t he?  
“It’s Saturday.”  
Oh. Jessica rumbled out some more sleepy grumbles and threw her arm over her eyes. “Fine, later.”  
“Later.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “It’s a date.”  
God, he was corny. She listened to him let himself out of her fire escape. To her disgust, she was smiling, too. She growled and threw her blanket over her head. Corny bastard. It was way too early to have to deal with this kind of sap.


End file.
